Ricardo Geromel is the managing partner of the Fort Lauderdale Strikers. In his journey to disrupt the beautiful game, his main goals are to win championships and make the Strikers a global reference in innovation. Former Strikers players include George Best, Gerd Muller, Gordon Banks, Elias Figueroa, Nene Cubillas, Ray Hudson and other soccer legends.
Ricardo co-wrote a cover story of Forbes Magazine, featuring an interview with Dilma Rousseff, Brazil's president.
The globetrotter has worked in five continents in different sectors: as agricultural commodities trader for Noble Group, Asia's largest diversified commodities trading company, in Hong Kong, Switzerland, Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay. Ricardo also worked as project manager in Guinea Conakry for Bolloré Group, a French conglomerate that operates the most extensive integrated logistics network in Africa. Ricardo has also worked in the soccer industry in Beijing, China. Ricardo has been writing for Forbes since July 2011.
Fluent in five languages, Ricardo holds a a Masters in Management from ESCP Europe, Paris, and a bachelor’s degree in business management from Fairleigh Dickinson University, New Jersey.
Tips and stories ideas are always welcome. Find Ricardo in twitter @ricardogeromel

Huge fuzz in Brazil’s blogosphere! Brazilian Performance Rights Agency ECAD, which stands for Brazil’s Central Bureau of Collection and Distribution, has sent messages to some Brazilian bloggers warning that they should pay copyright fees for embedding YouTube videos on their blogs or websites.

It takes seconds to start a blog with WordPress or Tumblr. Embedding a Youtube video onto a web page is as easy as cutting and pasting. A ten years old kid can effortlessly do it. In Brazil, the bloggers may be charged $200 monthly fee for embedding Youtube videos, even if Youtube Brasil already pays copyright fees.

Sounds like nonsense!? Astonishingly, according to absurd copyright laws in Brazil, the Central Bureau of Collection and Distribution is surprisingly correct in doing so.

ECAD, Brazil’s Central Bureau of Collection and Distribution, is a performance-rights organization that protects its members’ musical copyrights by monitoring public performances of their music, whether via a broadcast or live performance, and compensating them accordingly. ECAD can be described as the Brazilian version of American ASCAP or BMI, British PRS or Belgian SABAM.

ECAD has already registered 1,170 websites. According to the organization, this group of “large, medium and small” sites pay for the use of copyrighted music. In 2011, ECAD claims to have distributed R$ 2.6 million (US$ 1.48 mi) from Digital Media royalties, “benefiting over 21,000 composers, performers, musicians, publishers and phonographic producers.”

O Globo, one of Brazil’s leading newspapers, revealed that ECAD sent a message to Uno de Oliveira, owner of the nonprofit blog Caligraffiti. He was charged a monthly fee of R$ 352.59 (about US$ 200) for embedding a Youtube video in his blog. Then, O Estado de São Paulo, another leading newspaper, announced that the blog A Leitora ( “The Reader” in Portuguese) was the first to be charged the US$ 200 monthly fee for embedding an Youtube preview of the film Confessions of a Shopaholic.

Both blogs could be charged even more, but they were classified as “non-profit” webcasting. The other possible classifications are: podcasting (publishing excerpts from programs on the Internet that can be downloaded in mp3 format), simulcasting (simultaneous transmission of unchanged content) and setting (use of background music on website).

Yesterday ECAD was one of the hottest trends at Twitter Brazil. Artists, opinion makers, and celebrities twitted countless jokes relating to this episode. My favorite comes from the priest/singer Padre Fábio de Melo @pefabiodemelo: “At my place even the cock is forbidden to crow. I don’t want problems with ECAD.”

Some Brazilian bloggers refer to Brazil’s omnipresent corruption and inefficiency, questioning whether artists will actually receive any royalties at all. Others complain about the ridiculous value of the fee. Indeed, the US$ 200 monthly fee is exorbitant, considering that Brazil’s minimum wage is R$ 622 (or US$ 355). The underline message is that ECAD is greedy. After charging performance rights even from weddings with DJs, it’s now aiming a bigger target market: Brazil’s total online population of 80 million people.

Besides joking, virtually everyone protests against the nature of these monthly fees. YouTube Brasil already pays copyright fees to ECAD ( see details about how much Youtube Brasil pays on the bottom of the post). Therefore, charging bloggers as well is “double recovery.” The question is: if embedded videos are, for all purposes, just links back to Youtube why should bloggers pay royalties?

The legal foundation for the royalties charged by ECAD to blogs is a federal law created in mid-February 1998 that has not been revised since its creation 14 years ago (article 5, section II of the law 9.610/98). ECAD found a loophole in this ancient law that allows blogs to be described as “relays” and thus also be subjected to a fee.

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“according to absurd copyright laws in Brazil, the Central Bureau of Collection and Distribution is surprisingly correct in doing so” – I disagree with (the latter part of) this affirmation; according to the brazilian Copyright Act, ECAD only has the standing to collect fees from the *public performance* of works, which is a technical term, coined in Art. 68 par. 2 of the Copyright Act, that clearly states that this demands the use of phonograms and audiovisual works in *places frequented by the public*, which is clearly not the case of blogs, individually accessed in personal computers. This charges by ECAD should not survive judicial scrutiny.

Alexandre, according to ECAD, Youtube is the “transmitter” and of course, has to pay. But blogs embedding videos are “relays” and are also subject to these fees. ECAD’s spokesman: “The rights of public performance in digital media happen through the concept of transmission found in the article 5, section II of the law 9.610/98, in wich transmission or emission are the diffusion of sounds or images through radio waves, satellite signals, wire, cable or other conductor, optical or other electromagnetic process, so this includes the Internet.” ECAD also argues that the “transmitter” and the “relay” are completely different forms of use and as such, do not represent “double recovery.”

The point is, it´s not about the “transmission” or not. That is just a cloud of smoke from their part. ECAD may only collect rights when you have (a) public performance + (b) in places frequented by the public, period. Anything else falls beyond their legal attributions.

What a great article! But I must agree with Alexandre Pesseri: even with their spokesman saying the opposite, ECAD has not the legal warrant to collect fees from any internet website, either a blog or Youtube itself. However, I’m afraid Pesseri missed an important item when trying to explain ECAD’s intentional ambiguous interpretation of our poor law text, which is though fairly clear about what is a usage of protected works on the web. At art. 29, VII, our law says: (depends on clear an previous licensing the usage of protected works, of any kind, such as) …the distribution (not public performance!) for offering of works and productions by cable, fiber optics, satellite, waves or any other system which allows the user to select the works in order to perceive it in the time and place previously determined by the one who formulates the request (clearly, the internet usage description), and in the cases where the access to such works and productions is done by any system which implies the payment of fees by the user (video on demand, etc.). At art. 29 VIII, b), the law describes another usage, and turns clear what is called “music performance”, where ECAD has its whole and only attribution, defined at art. 99: “the public performance of musical works”. Pesseri already showed us what stands in art. 68, §2º, that defines “public performance” in our country, binding it to be made in a “community frequented place”, what definitely are not the places where the general public (blog’s or youtube consumers) get access to the internet content, such as an iPhone screen, an iPad or a personal computer inside a bedroom.

The crux relies in a special condition, that again recalls the caducity of our law text: we had absolutely no regulation defining how mechanical rights should be managed, exactly the ones reached by internet usage. Just as in United States, Brazil is one of the very few countries that do not impose collective management to such rights, what should be considered a huge mistake, because it tends to limit the protection of copyrighted works, relying the licensing solely on the structure of publishers themselves, or in societies they may contract. In most countries, mechanical rights are also collected by the public performer societies, ore another one working with it in a kind of “joint-venture” (such as BUMA-STEMRA, in Netherlands, or PRS-MCPS in England). The internet “making available” of protected works is being worldwide treated as a new kind of usage, that generates mechanical rights for its right holders, because the simple fact that the uploader has to make a copy of that work in the computer hosting the website, in order to make it available. Then, the consumer needs to make a download to his computer (even as a streaming, with no further access besides the first one), what stands for another copy, but not (and never) a public performance, with the only exception of online transmission, still a small fraction of internet usage. But ECAD is not allowed to deal with mechanical rights. Nevertheless, ‘for accidence’ their two biggests author’s societies in their board, UBC and ABRAMUS, representing the major publishers, are indeed allowed to collect mechanical rights, unfortunately lacking the structure necessary to reach thousands of websites by themselves, what ECAD does. As representing 90% of commercial works, this turned to be a real opportunity and, as controlling members, they opted to slightly bend ECAD’s attributions to incorporate this new and chubby slice of market.

Now, as being brought to the spotlights, they rapidly made a back move, announcing a shaming “revision” that should at least put some pressure in the process of reviewing the law, abruptly interrupted by the Minister of Culture, a very close friend of ECAD’s administration, under Dilma’s blind blessing. Still a lot to do…

Hi Ricardo, I’ve just noticed my comment has been “called out”, probably by someone who represent the side of the “game” which has a lot to loose if this information gets spread. Is there a way for to know who’s behind this request? It may be revealing…

Dear Alexandre, I am the one responsible for “calling out” comments on the Decoupling blog. Basically, Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. I have been writing for Forbes since July 2011 and your last comment was one of the most pertinents I ve ever read in my blog. It adds a lot of value to the post. Thanks! You are always welcome here. Hopefully, I will call out many of your comments…